Device management weird behaviour?

[gomezz]

For some time I have had three devices paired in the BT TV app: Laptop; tablet; and Chromecast dongle.

I have just got myself a new phone, moving from an old Windows Mobile one which does not run the BT apps of course to an modern Android phone.  However when I stream on the new phone the device management shows that as third device with slot four still open.  I go back to stream on the tablet and that then becomes the third device with slot four still open.  Seems I can switch back and forth willy-nilly and even have both devices streaming at the same time.

I wonder if it is related to my using an app to initially set up the new phone by copying the configuration from the tablet and there is some embedded id in the BT TV app which makes it think both mobile and tablet are the same device?

[DarrenDev]

Thanks for raising this @gomezz - you're right that the app keeps an ID internally, as Android doesn't provide a reliable ID that can be used to identify the device. It's very frustrating that a manufacturer has provided a process that has copied across data without following normal Android best practice, causing both devices to appear with the same ID.

Who is the manufacturer of your phone and tablet?

[gomezz]

Samsung Galaxy S2 tablet
Samsung S20 FE 5G

What does happen is the the app on the tablet and on the phone *do* show a different display ID for this third device but I guess that is not what the process is relying on to identify unique devices.  When I try and edit this display ID to something more meaningful to me it then gets overwritten again when I switch to streaming on the other device.

[gomezz]

Are there any plans to change the app to also check the display ID as well as the hidden device ID when working out if it is the same device or not?

Just to confirm that this is not causing me any problems at all in practise and I do not envisage me wanting to use any other device which may then clog up the final slot which would then stop me using the tablet or phone for 30 days if and when there is a fix issued for this.

[DarrenDev · Accepted solution]

I assume by "display id" you just mean the 1, 2, 3, 4 on the screen?

There is no way for us to validate that the internal ID we have has been duplicated between devices. Android doesn't provide us with a reliable unique ID, so we generate an ID on first use of the app and keep it.  If a device transfer utility copies that ID from one device to another (something that only a system level app has access to do), we have no way of knowing that it has happened.

For your account, both of those devices will now occupy that slot.  If you want to clear one of them down, simply clear the app storage from the app info screen - this will reset that device back to looking like a new one.  This device-sharing won't affect anything else on your account, and won't prevent any future device swaps.

[gomezz]

Couldn't find an option to clear the app storage (only clear cache which didn't fix things) so uninstalled and re-installed the BT TV app on my phone and now all four slots are filled with tablet and phone being shown separately on both devices.

Thanks for your help.